Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya announced on social media that 80 migrant smugglers and 2,155 irregular migrants have been detained by Turkish police, Deutsche Welle (DW) Turkish service reported.
Yerlikaya said the suspects were detained during police operations in 27 provinces to bring down migrant smuggling networks. “We will not allow our country to become a free passage for smugglers and criminals,” Yerlikaya said on X.
Turkish authorities have cracked down on migrant smuggling networks several times over the years. In November 2023 five smugglers and 262 irregular migrants were detained in Istanbul, where they were preparing to travel to Europe. In December of the same year, 192 traffickers and 4,586 irregular migrants were detained in police operations across 37 provinces.
In 2019 police arrested 20 members of an international migrant-smuggling organization, including one of Europe’s most wanted traffickers, Akbar Omar Tawfeeq.
The crackdown came after an investigation led by Istanbul’s chief public prosecutor, who suggested that the organization smuggled migrants from Afghanistan and northern Iraq to Greece, Italy and other European countries in return for large sums of money.
Furthermore, the group smuggled migrants stuck in Greece to other European Union countries, as a second route across Europe. Thousands of undocumented migrants are believed to have been smuggled, according to the officials.
